Soap dates back to Babylonian times and has undergone many changes. Exfoliating soap has been manufactured by major US soap companies to help with skin appearance. Dead skin is scoured off by exfoliation which allows moisturizing agents to reach fresh skin cells. Exfoliation works on all skin types and colors. Common natural material used for exfoliates has ranged from salt, grains, apricot pits, seeds, sand, walnut shells, and fish scales. These products have a hardness rating of 4 or higher on the Mohs Scale of Mineral Hardness. Therefore the harder the exfoliate, the more damage it could potentially do to the skin. Some companies make synthetic exfoliation products that are lipid based microbeads (1-2 Mohs Scale) which tend to be the most gentle of abrasives but do not work well with more difficult exfoliation needs.
One natural abrasive, calcium carbonate, can be extracted from materials like limestone (3 on Mohs Scale) or marble (9 on Mohs Scale) and can be found within a few commercial soaps or scrubs. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 6,673,756 to Sonnenberg et al., U.S. Pat. No. 7,871,969 to Myers, U.S. Pat. No. 2002/0052300 to Kemper et al., U.S. Pat. No. 2007/0203040 to Reicherz et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,786,432 to Kanfer et al., U.S. Pat. No. 2,188,140 to Widmer. Mining for calcium carbonate is a process that strips the earth of natural resources. This process adds to pollution due to the need for further chemical processing of the stone to make a “pure” calcium carbonate.
An exfoliating composition that does not have the aforementioned disadvantages of conventional exfoliating compositions is needed.